| Taped a few months after Sept. 11, Margaret Cho’s new
performance film briefly captures the comedian in an uncharacteristically
serious mood. She too was deeply moved by what she saw at Ground Zero in
New York. She made her contribution by “giving blow jobs to rescue workers”
because, as she says, “we all have to do our part.”
But the most valuable gift Cho can provide is another dose of very raunchy comedy. Notorious C.H.O. is the follow-up to 2000’s I’m the One That I Want, the show and concert film that established Cho, the first Asian-American to have her own failed sitcom (1994’s All-American Girl), as one of the most inspired stand-ups on the circuit. With a repertoire that has a conspicuous absence of jokes about airplane food, Cho riffs on her life as an adventurous bisexual and a fag hag par excellence. Notorious C.H.O. has oodles of vulgar highlights, like when Cho describes her time as a submissive at a straight sex club (“I don’t know if I’m a bottom because it turns me on or because I’m lazy”), offers her taste in lesbians (“I want a woman who looks like John Goodman”) and complains about discrimination (“A government that would deny a gay man the right to a bridal registry is a fascist state”). Cho is such a smart and engaging performer that the film isn’t hampered much by its utterly utilitarian visual style and the overly familiar feel of some of the new routines, like her impressions of her mother and a lengthy bit about “what if guys had periods?” And even if Cho’s set-closing plea for self-acceptance is too strident, it’s still important to note that she doesn’t just talk about sex because it’s dirty or shocking or funny but because it’s a means of expressing her control over her body and her life. Surely every one of Cho’s blow jobs is a blow for freedom. |